About this project

Treasure Chest: Realistic Resource Tokens for Board Games

$181,157

pledged of $25,000 goal

3,221

backers

Thanks to all Kickstarter backers who forged the Treasure Chest with us! If you discover the Treasure Chest after the project ends, you can pre-order it and/or any of the add-ons (wooden stars and metal coins) through the Stonemaier Games website.

The creators of Viticulture, Euphoria, and Tuscany bring you the Stonemaier Games Treasure Chest, an assortment of premium-grade realistic resource gaming tokens (gold, wood, ore, stone, clay, and gems). All tokens come pre-painted.

We love how realistic resource tokens add to any tabletop game experience, and we want to share that with fellow gamers around the world. We've already created the sculpts for these tokens--now we just need your help to make them a reality!

We will add 1 resource token for every 100 backers (+1 gold after the first 100 backers, then +1 wood after the next 100 backers, and so on). We'll update the total each morning.

Day 1: 120 total tokens (20 each of gold, wood, ore, stone, clay, and gems)

Day 2: 131 total tokens (22 each of gold, wood, ore, stone, and clay; 21 gems)

Day 3: 133 total tokens (23 gold, and 22 each of wood, ore, stone, clay, and gems)

Day 4: 135 total tokens (23 each of gold, wood, and ore; 22 each of stone, clay, and gems)

Day 5: 136 total tokens (23 each of gold, wood, ore, and stone; 22 each of clay and gems)

Day 6-7: 137 total tokens (23 each of gold, wood, ore, stone, and clay; 22 gems)

Day 8: 138 total tokens (23 each of gold, wood, ore, stone, clay, and gems)

Day 9: 139 total tokens (24 gold; 23 each of wood, ore, stone, clay, and gems)

Day 10: 140 total tokens (24 each of gold and wood; 23 each of ore, stone, clay, and gems)

Day 11-12: 142 total tokens (24 each of gold, wood, ore, and stone; 23 each of clay and gems)

Day 13: 143 total tokens (24 each of gold, wood, ore, stone, and clay; 23 gems)

Day 14: 144 total tokens (24 each of gold, wood, ore, stone, clay, and gems)

Day 15: 145 total tokens (25 gold; 24 each of wood, ore, stone, clay, and gems)

Day 16: 147 total tokens (25 each of gold, wood, and ore; 24 each of stone, clay, and gems)

Day 17: 149 total tokens (25 each of gold, wood, ore, stone, and clay; 24 gems)

We'll round up at the end of the project to make sure the tokens are evenly distributed.

You can see a growing list of games that use these resources on BGG here.

Thanks to the worldwide fulfillment system explained on our Kickstarter Lessons blog here and here, we have very cost-effective ways of shipping the Treasure Chest.

Only pay the shipping fee once per pledge (any # of units, reward level, or country code). After selecting your reward level, add the shipping cost to your pledge total.

The following may be added to the $33 pledge level and above. After selecting your reward level, add this cost to your pledge total:

Any backer may pledge to the $290 level--you don't have to be a retailer.

Viticulture & Tuscany are available for pre-order through our website, as are the wooden stars and lira as stand-alone purchases. We also have a few copies of Euphoria.

Money-Back Guarantee: If you decide you don't like the Treasure Chest within 1 month of receiving it, you can return it for a full pledge refund (see FAQ).

Huge Discount: Based on the manufacturing cost, the Treasure Chest should have an MSRP of $60. We can keep the price much lower by only selling the first print run directly through Kickstarter, our website, and Amazon.

Make It Better for Everyone: The more backers we get, the better the Treasure Chest will be (see stretch goals). The Kickstarter price will remain the same, but the post-Kickstarter price will increase as we add tokens.

Localized Shipping: Our shipping prices for pre-ordered games are so low because we send games in bulk to fulfillment centers around the world. This is your chance to lock in the lowest possible shipping rate.

We Need You: We need your financial support to be able to manufacture and ship these Treasure Chests to gamers around the world.

Free Euphoria Recruits: We're including 16 updated and revised Euphoria recruit cards in every Treasure Chest. They'll also be available from BGG for $5 in December.

We selected the resources for this first Treasure Chest with the help of thousands of voters on our website. Thus the resources in this Treasure Chest are set--we won't be adding any more or it would significantly impact the production schedule.

However, we still want to hear your ideas for future Treasure Chests. We're particularly interested in resources that (a) can be represented in a "realistic" way, (b) aren't already produced by another company, and (c) apply to several popular games (not just one game).

The realistic resource tokens in the Treasure Chest are a great way to upgrade the retail version of Euphoria (shown here).

We anticipate that some backers may want a ton of a specific type of resource--for example, enough gold tokens to fill a swimming pool. There are companies that are really good at selling individual resource tokens...but we are not one of them.

Our supply chain is based on creating one cohesive version of this premium product, making it affordable for you, and shipping it to you quickly and cost-effectively.

photo courtesy of Kim Euker at http://kiestone.smugmug.com/

Risks and challenges

The Treasure Chest is a first for us in that it's not a game--rather, it's a box full of tokens used in a number of games. The challenge with these tokens is that they're all custom sculpts and moulds, which can be time-consuming and expensive to perfect. Fortunately we have lots of experience with wooden, resin, and metal pieces from Viticulture, Euphoria, and Tuscany.

With such precious components in every box, we're taking extra precautions to make sure the contents arrive safe and sound. Specifically, we will use a microfiber-lined box insert to protect the tokens from scratching, and there will be a layer of bubble wrap inside each box. The boxes will be made of very sturdy 2mm cardboard that can be stored vertically as well as horizontally without dumping the contents.

Stonemaier Games established an advisory board of industry veterans in January '13 to help us mitigate risks and challenges. So even though we will surely face new challenges in the future, we have an incredible team of experienced advisors to point us in the right direction.

If you would like to know more about what we learned from our Kickstarter experiences and research, go to www.stonemaiergames.com to see 100+ Kickstarter Lessons to help you create a successful project too.

FAQ

Within one month of receiving your copy of the Treasure Chest, you can send it back to us for a full pledge refund, no questions asked. We’re in St. Louis, but we have ambassadors worldwide, so the return shipping cost to you will be minimal.

We’d love to sign your Treasure Chest, but only if we meet you in person. Because of the efficiency of order fulfillment system, having your Treasure Chest shipped to us to sign and then shipping it to you adds a significant cost that we can’t afford to incur.

Even though we’ve completed the sculpts for these tokens, producing and shipping them takes time. We’re giving backers the option of paying a little more for their Treasure Chest ($39 instead of $33) to enable us to ship some pallets of the product to fulfillment centers via air freight instead of ocean freight. That reduces the shipment time by 3-4 weeks.

We would greatly prefer if you used Kickstarter’s system, but if you’re unable to do so, you can pledge via PayPal during the campaign to stonemaiergames@gmail.com. Please make sure to include shipping if applicable.

For the Treasure Chest, we’ll raise the price after the campaign ends to reflect to total contents with all stretch goals. Backers and non-backers alike will be able to pre-order copies of the Treasure Chest at that updated price from our website: www.stonemaiergames.com.

Our shipping methods allow us to keep costs down for backers, and we’ve had a great experience working with Amazon fulfillment for both Viticulture and Euphoria. A very small number of games (about dozen out of 6,000 games) arrived with dented corners or torn seams. We want you to know up front that this is a possibility. If there is significant damage to the box and you send us a photo of the box and the packaging so we can report it to Amazon, we will replace it.

We’re very grateful for distributors who purchase our games and sell them to retailers. They do an amazing job at getting tons of games to hundreds of game stores worldwide.

However, the Treasure Chest presents a unique challenge for distribution due to the manufacturing cost of these premium tokens compared to the price at which we would have to sell the Treasure Chest to distributors (the standard is 60% off MSRP). The Treasure Chest costs just as much to make as Viticulture, which has an MSRP of $60, but we don’t think that’s the correct list price for these tokens. They’re premium tokens, but still…they’re just tokens.

So instead of going the route of traditional distribution with the Treasure Chest, we’ll only sell it directly to consumers. We’ll stick with that strategy for subsequent print runs unless it doesn’t go well the first time around.

We’ve tried various pick-up or local delivery methods for Viticulture and Euphoria, and it’s great to meet backers in person, but it ends up costing the same amount for us (we still have to pay overseas freight and US trucking) and it’s not as efficient as using Amazon fulfillment, so we won’t offer local pick up or delivery in the future. We still love to play our games (or any games) with local backers at Arch Reactor, local conventions, and local game nights.